Crowded House Together Alone

Crowded House Album Reviews

Breaking up Split Enz, Neil Finn retained drummer Paul Hester from the final Enz lineup and created a more streamlined band. They recruited Australian bass player Nick Seymour (brother of Hunters and Collector’s lead singer Mark) and secured an American record deal. Crowded House found immediate success with the single ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’, from their 1986 debut album, reaching number two on the American charts.

Introduction

While Crowded House didn’t maintain that level of success in America, their third album Woodface, which included Tim Finn as a band member, established them as a popular band in the UK. The group split after their fourth album, 1993’s almost-perfect Together Alone, but reunited for 2007’s Time on Earth, a tribute to the deceased Hester.

Crowded House follow a mainstream guitar pop/rock template, and Neil Finn has openly acknowledged his love for other craftsmen like The Beatles and Elton John. Coupled with Neil Finn’s settled personal life, reflected in his songs, there have always been criticisms of the group being a safe, “dad-rock” band. While there’s certainly some truth in this, I don’t listen to Crowded House for experimentation and boundary-pushing. the main draw-card has always been Neil Finn’s expertly crafted songs. If you’re a sceptic, at least give Together Alone a chance – Youth’s unorthodox production techniques and the wild New Zealand landscape bring the best out of the band, and parts of the record are rawer and more beautiful than anything else in their catalogue.

While Neil Finn was the creative lynchpin, writing the large majority of the material, drummer Paul Hester was the soul of Crowded House. His unpredictable antics enlivened the band’s concerts, and they were a more fun live band than their formal studio records would indicate. Neil Finn went on record as saying: “Paul’s got limitations technically sometimes, but ….. he played my songs very well. He plays a shuffle in the same way I play the guitar. There was a certain chemistry in the band.”

I’ve covered the Finn Brothers solo and duo material on a Finn Brothers page.

Crowded House Album Reviews

Crowded House

Crowded House 1986 Album

1986, 7.5/10
After breaking up Split Enz, Neil Finn retained drummer Paul Hester and recruited bassist Nick Seymour, creating Crowded House. Producer Mitchell Froom is just about an unofficial fourth member here, contributing keyboards as well as his production style which often emphasises organic instruments. Crowded House scored their biggest hit in America with their debut, reaching number 2 on the US singles charts, but despite the presence of the timeless ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’, it’s the least interesting of their initial run of albums.

Crowded House is a little generic in places, and the songs are less nuanced and interesting than Finn’s later work. The horn sections in ‘Mean to Me’ and ‘That’s What I Call Love’ haven’t aged well, while ‘Hole in the River’ would benefit from a more organic arrangement, although it’s haunting even with a synthesizer-dominated arrangement. The best song is the best known; ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ utilises a Maori strum on Finn’s guitar, and Froom’s organ solo. ‘World Where You Live’ is an excellent hooky pop song, and there are also enjoyable pop songs like ‘Can’t Carry On’ and ‘Now We’re Getting Somewhere’.

Crowded House is a good first up album, but it’s a shame that it’s defined the band in America, as they became more interesting as they developed.


Temple of Low Men

Crowded House Temple of Low Men

1988, 8.5/10
Crowded House’s second album is a significant step forward from their first, even though it failed to match the impact of its predecessor. It’s a little darker and more unified in tone. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a great single like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’. Lead single ‘Better Be Home Soon’ is a very good composition, but it’s not immediate enough to be a hit song. That’s representative of the album as a whole – Temple of Low Men doesn’t have as many pop hooks, but it’s more mature and cohesive than Crowded House’s debut.

The standout track on Temple of Low Men is the beautiful ‘Into Temptation’, with a soaring bridge, inspired by Neil’s Catholic childhood, while the brooding, simmering ‘When You Come’ is another highlight. There are plenty of low-key and melodic pieces like ‘Better Be Home Soon’, ‘I Feel Possessed’ and ‘Never Be The Same’; these are balanced by the more uptempo ‘Kill Eye’, ‘Sister Madly’, the latter featuring guitar solos from label-mate Richard Thompson.

Temple of Low Men is a more mature, nuanced work from Crowded House, but it failed to make an impact in America – fortunately, their next album would launch them as a major act in the United Kingdom.


Woodface

Crowded House Woodface

1991, 8/10
Woodface is a combination of two separate recording projects; an attempt at a third Crowded House album, and Neil Finn’s collaboration with his older brother Tim. The sessions for the Crowded House album were not particularly fruitful, and the Finn’s album was only half completed. Neil decided that the best solution would be to combine the two. Not surprisingly Woodface is disjointed, even though producer Mitchell Froom worked on both projects. Woodface contains some of Crowded House’s best work, but like a lot of albums from the early CD era, it’s overlong and it drags in places.

Highlights include the signature singles ‘Weather With You’ and ‘Four Seasons in One Day’, both with plenty of meteorological references and Finn brothers harmonies, but ‘Fall At Your Feet’, a solo Neil effort, might be the best song with its harmony-laden chorus. The opener ‘Chocolate Cake’ is awkward, and effectively killed their American career with the line “the excess of fat on your American bones”, while ‘There Goes God’ is also controversial, but stronger musically. The second half is less convincing – you could remove the four tracks from ‘Fame Is’ to Hester’s ‘Italian Plastic’ without losing much, although Tim’s vocal on torch song ‘All I Ask’ is gorgeous. But the album ends strongly with hidden treasures ‘She Goes On’ and ‘How Will You Go?’

There’s too much filler on Woodface – it would have been a terrific 10-track album – but it contains some of the band’s best-loved songs.


Together Alone

Crowded House Together Alone

1993, 10/10
Crowded House’s final studio album before their initial breakup was recorded in a lonely beach studio in the north of New Zealand. The band chose to use another producer rather than Froom to explore new sounds, and Youth (better known for his work in dance music) bought more spontaneity to the recording process with techniques such as asking the guitarists to play in a stone circle 200 metres away from the studio, or making the group run around naked before recording to lose their inhibitions. Previous Crowded House albums could be accused of being too mainstream and mannered; Together Alone tears down such boundaries and captures them more raw and emotional than ever before.

With the addition of second guitarist Mark Hart, rockers such as ‘Black and White Boy’ and ‘Locked Out’ are far more intense than their counterparts on previous albums, while ‘Private Universe’ and ‘Nails in My Feet’ are their most beautiful songs. The Polynesian percussion in ‘Private Universe’ and the Maori choir in the title track give the album a distinct Pacific flavour. Many fans, along with Neil Finn himself, would nominate the surreal ‘Private Universe’ as their favourite Crowded House recording. Other particularly poignant tracks include the single ‘Distant Sun’ (“I don’t pretend to know what you want/But I offer love.”), ‘Nails in My Feet’ and the gentle ‘Fingers of Love’. The group composed ‘Kare Kare’ sets the scene with an evocative description and musical representation of the landscape, while the epic ‘Catherine Wheels’ (with a Tim co-write and backing vocal) is another moody piece at a much slower tempo.

The near-perfect Together Alone is easily the most stunning project that Neil Finn has been involved in.


Recurring Dream: The Very Best Of

Crowded House The Very Best Of Recurring Dream

1996, not rated
The band’s first four albums, particularly 1993’s fantastic Together Alone, are worth hearing individually, making this compilation superfluous. There are three new songs, although only the rhythmic ‘Instinct’ is comparable with their best work.

More helpful, some editions also came with a great bonus disc of live tracks collated by Split Enz bassist Nigel Griggs. In particular, the epic ten-minute ‘Hole In The River’ blows away its studio counterpart – and dedicated fans would be well advised to track down this version.


Afterglow

Crowded House Afterglow

1999, 7/10
Afterglow is a collection of Crowded House’s outtakes and b-sides. There’s an alternate version of ‘Private Universe’ from Together Alone, and ‘Left Hand’ turned up on the live disc from Recurring Dream, but the rest of these songs are appearing for the first time on a long player. Afterglow doesn’t collect every single Crowded House leftover – it’s the best of the leftovers, arranged to make a self-contained forty-five-minute album that stands alongside their original albums. There aren’t any major classics hiding here, but the more relaxed atmosphere helps to bring out a less starched version of the band, which does a lot to compensate.

The simmering, majestic ‘I Am In Love’ would be a standout track on any of their albums. The guitar arpeggios of ‘Recurring Dream’, one of the band’s earliest songs with original guitarist Craig Hooper still in the band, would have made for one of the best songs on the debut. The wordplay of ‘I Love You Dawn’, which alternates between referring to the dawn and Finn’s wife, whose middle name is conveniently Dawn, is also gorgeous, while ‘Time Immemorial’ is a pretty waltz. There’s lightweight material like ‘My Telly’s Gone Bung’, and some of the material ditched from the Woodface sessions to accommodate the Finn brothers material is also unremarkable.

Regardless, as an outtake collection, Afterglow is a surprisingly satisfying compilation.


Time on Earth

Crowded House Time on Earth

2007, 6/10
Original Crowded House drummer Paul Hester took his own life in 2005, the catalyst for the first Crowded House album in fourteen years. Neil Finn is rejoined by Nick Seymour and Mark Hart, while Beck sideman Matt Sherrod replaces Hester as drummer. Time on Earth is an elegant set of songs, largely inspired by Hester’s passing, and it’s a fitting tribute to him. But it also feels like it’s missing the spark that Hester brought to the original group, and at almost an hour it’s much too long and it drags in places.

The best songs are generally the most mournful and beautiful – the piano-led ‘Pour La Monde’ is gorgeously infused with harmony vocals, while ‘People Are Like Suns’ is a pretty orchestrated conclusion. ‘Nobody Wants To’ is a strong opener, while ‘Silent House’ scores with memorable pop hooks.

If you’re a fan of Neil Finn’s impeccable song craft and tasteful arrangements you may rate this much higher than I do; Time on Earth is too long and it doesn’t feel enough like Crowded House for me to rank it up with their initial run of studio albums.


Intriguer

Crowded House Intriguer

2010, 7.5/10
Like Time on Earth, Intriguer doesn’t feel much like a Crowded House album. It features the same core lineup – Matt Sherrod along with Finn, Seymour, and Hart – but it’s full of guests. Collaborators include Lisa Germano and Jon Brion, as well as New Zealand luminaries like The Mutton Birds’ Don McGlashan and Lawrence of Arabia. Sharon Finn is the most prominent guest, on backing vocals. Even though it doesn’t feel like Crowded House, Intriguer is a clear rebound from a couple of sleepy Finn albums like Everyone Is Here and Time on Earth.

Intriguer is more energetic and guitar-oriented than any other Neil Finn project from this century. There’s a tiny hint of progressive rock on songs like ‘Archer’s Arrows’, with Germano on violin – not since Split Enz’s Time and Tide in 1982 has Finn sounded arty. Nothing on Intriguer feels as effortlessly tuneful as Crowded House’s best songs, but Finn produces memorable choruses on songs like ‘Amsterdam’, ‘Twice If You’re Lucky’, and ‘Saturday Sun’. Mellow songs like ‘Elephants’ and ‘Isolation’ are also pretty.

It doesn’t feel like Crowded House, but Intriguer is one of Neil Finn’s best records of the 21st century.


Dreamers Are Waiting

2021, 6.5/10
It’s increasingly difficult to differentiate Crowded House from Neil Finn’s other work. On their seventh album, founding bassist Nick Seymour is the only returning player from their previous album besides Neil Finn. Instead, the band’s augmented by familiar faces. Mitchell Froom produced Crowded House’s first three albums and played the memorable organ solo on ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ – he’s on keyboards here. Neil Finn’s sons Liam and Elroy join on guitar and drums. The new lineup of Crowded House is strong musically. The harmonies are their strongest since Tim Finn was in the band for Woodface, and the sophisticated rhythms and keyboards bring out a different aspect of Finn’s writing.

Crowded House has made three albums since their reformation in 2006. None of them recapture the magic of their initial tenure with drummer Paul Hester, but they’re all worthy. Dreamers Are Waiting is a pensive, folk-inflected album that sometimes recalls 2007’s mournful Time on Earth. While this line-up of Crowded House feels more natural than any other post-Paul Hester, Finn’s songs are serviceable but not sparkling. At this point in his career, Finn’s an artisan, more comfortable writing for the sake of his craft than for the sake of hits.

Dreamers Are Waiting opens with the folky waltz of ‘Bad Times Good’, while there’s a hint of Bacharach about the arrangement of ‘Playing With Fire’. The more upbeat material like ‘Sweet Tooth’ and ‘Whatever You Want’ recalls Jeff Tweedy from the Wilco (The Album) era. The warmth of ‘Real Life Woman’ comes closest to the 1980s and 1990s Crowded House sound.

Dreamers Are Waiting is tasteful and accomplished. Still, Neil Finn has made a lot of albums and if you’re new I’d start somewhere else.

Ten Best Crowded House Songs

Distant Sun
Don’t Dream It’s Over
Private Universe
Hole In The River (specifically, the live version from the Recurring Dreams bonus disc)
Into Temptation
Fall At Your Feet
Nails In My Feet
Four Seasons in One Day
Catherine Wheels
In My Command

Back to New Zealand album reviews…

5 Comments

  1. I definitely agree to your review (and high ranking) of “Together Alone“. “Private Universe“ and “Distant Sun“ are examples of stellar songwriting, both combining deeply personal musings with straight-pop accessability. That said, Neil Finn’s music has always been strongly rooted in the song aesthetics of the sixties; I have always seen him as a ‘giant standing on the shoulders of giants‘. While listening to “Kare Kare“, I can hear George Harrison’s mystic whine and slide playing style; the vocal performance of the second song, “In My Command“, reminds me of John Lennon’s angry yet vulnerable bellowing in some Beatles‘ tunes, while “Nails In Her Feet“ shows elements of McCartney’s playfulness: Imagine this song with a string arrangement like “Eleanor Rigby“! Stylistically, a major part of „Together Alone“ comes close to what I would have expected as the ‘Great-Fab-Four-Reunion-Album-That-Never-Happened‘!
    And in my mind there are even more reasons why this album is so evocative. I suspect that “Black And White Boy“ could be about Michael Jackson, which might also be reflected in the ‘heavier‘ style of the song itself. “Catherine Wheels“ reminds me of what I know about the tragic life and death of New-Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield; if there should be such references, one would have to work them out in the lyrics (or perhaps: ask the ‘poet‘ about his intention?!). Sadly, there is no lyrics sheet with the CD I possess. “Fingers Of Love“ has a top-notch atmospheric arrangement, and “Pineapple Head“ is another highlight: Who else but Neil Finn would have been able to turn a young child’s feverish dream into such a timeless pop-folk tune?
    Even though not all the songs are as strong as the ones mentioned above (weaker tracks, in my opinion, are “Walking On The Spot“ and “Skin Feeling“), a ten-star rating for this album seems perfectly appropriate. One of my personal all-time favourites!

    • The thing I like about it the most is the change in production. Froom worked well for them, but at the same time his stuff often sounds a little constipated, and the change of scenery and producer made them loosen up. I agree about the two weaker songs, although ‘Walking on the Spot’ is really pretty with the accordion. I feel like Together Alone got a lot of acclaim when it came out, but it a little forgotten now. Finn has always felt more like McCartney than Lennon to me, but has the odd-Lennon moment too, like ‘Kill Eye’ from Temple of Low Men.

  2. Distant Sun is also my fave Crowded House song.
    Woodface definitely is up there as one of the great albums ever.
    But I also rate Time on Earth very highly.
    I love the variety of stuff like Transit Lounge, atmospheric tracks like A Sigh and Silent House, beautiful melodies like English Trees and Pour Le Monde. 9/10

  3. I really like Time on Earth. I dont think it’s too long. I love the variety of tracks. It’s an 8 for me. Woodface is brilliant but I skip Chocolate Cake. Again I love the variety and tracks like There Goes God and As sure as I am. The closing tracks are simply beautiful. 9/10
    I still love the first album too. So bright but also has that underside with Hole in the River. 9/10
    I haven’t mentioned Together Alone. My fave track of all CH is Distant Sun. This is an album I need to get back into. I see many rate it their best.

    • Thanks for writing in! Together Alone had a really good reputation in New Zealand after it was released. It seems to have dimmed over time, but I’m not really sure why. Do you like the new one?

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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.

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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.

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